Anticipating the coming “Blockbuster”

If there is one phrase that adequately describes me now, it is “old and getting older”. I would say that I don’t really mind it, but that wouldn’t be the truth. The fact is I have to accept it because the alternative stinks so badly. That alternative, BTW, no longer includes dying young, and even if I had ever done that, I could never have left a good-looking corpse. That, as much as anything, has kept me around all these years.

While getting old may not be all it’s cracked up to be, under the right circumstances, it can be made more tolerable. One of those circumstances involves relating the experiences of one’s youth to the youth of today. And one can certainly relate more to those experiences, and better relate those experiences to unsuspecting passers-by, if the surroundings wherein they took place are still standing. Believe me, I now know better than I would have ever thought possible the truth behind those words.

It is often said, and by people who ought to know better, that the time one spends in high school are the most pleasant years of one’s life. In reality, those years that see you go abroad for the first time, to seek your fortune in whatever manner you so choose to do this, are your salad days. My salad days were spent, for the first time in my life, away from the countryside where I grew up, and in the Big-relatively speaking, anyway-City of Pikeville. Ah, what a town it was in those days. Sidewalks didn’t roll up until ten or so. Had a G. C. Murphy’s within walking distance of my apartment, and on my days off, nothing to do but stroll about the burg, and take in the sights.

There was so much that was magical about life then. First of all, there was a job, the likes of which I have yet to see again. I got a job with South Central Bell, then a member of AT&T’s happy family, a corporation first known as Southern Bell, and later Bell South, and God knows what else, before it reunited with one of its former siblings, and re-incarnated itself as “the new AT&T”. Ma Bell had lots of jobs in the area at that time. Its Second Street offices housed telephone operators (remember them?) on the second floor, and on the first floor, Installation and Repair, where I labored mightily.

It was the nature of that job that made it so enjoyable. Temporary, part-time it was called. That meant three weeks on, and one week off. In other words, I worked only three weeks out of the month. That adds up to twelve weeks vacation a year. And it paid enough for my apartment on College Street. Get this, two-bedroom, fully furnished, utilities paid, TV included, for $125.00 a month. Phone service for me, as I did live in the Big City, was so reasonable that I paid the bill every other month.

And for entertainment? There was the Weddington Theater. Here I spent many a happy hour watching first-run movies that I find hard to believe I would ever pay to see, now that my-uh-tastes have become refined. One of those films was the blockbuster film “The Towering Inferno”. The term “blockbuster” was applied, I suppose, because this was the first film to star two giants of the film industry, Paul Newman, and one of my favorite actors of all times, Steve “Bullitt” McQueen. What made this film so memorable was a line by another character from that film, portrayed by the inimitable Orange Juice Simpson. Orange Juice played a security guard, what else, and at one point in the movie, the fire in the high rise had advanced to the point where the building’s power supply was affected. On the day my brother and I were in attendance, when this scene came on, and Orange Juice solemnly announced “We’ve lost power” (paraphrased, as I cannot remember the line exactly), the power in Pikeville went out, the Weddington went black, and the audience, appreciative of the irony of the situation, immediately broke out in applause.

While we’re on that block (it’s coming destruction is the reason I’m writing this, after all), let me say that the Pinson Hotel played its part in my youthful experiences. Before I got my first apartment, I put up there for a couple of weeks. That meant eating at the restaurant next to the hotel’s lobby, in the space now occupied by Chirico’s. And how I could eat then. It seems impossible to a poor diabetic now, but I recall one breakfast that consisted of a Barney Fife-like meal: two eggs over easy, bacon on the crisp side, hash browns, and a stack of wheats, heavy on the maple syrup. And lots of strong, black coffee. I may have even had an audience as I consumed that meal. Shoot, just thinking about a meal like that makes my blood sugar go up now.

Well, a lot has changed in Pikeville since then. The multi-screen theaters long ago put the Weddington O. O. B. G. C. Murphy’s and much of the other businesses that were once situated downtown have long since disappeared. The completion of the cut-through is a responsible as anything for many of the changes. Too, those jobs that were so plentiful in town are largely gone, for various reasons. And the only real growth industry that’s left in the Big City is judicial in nature. Hence the White Elephant in the River Fill, and the crying need for another one, somewhere close to the original.

Well, you know what was said in the film “The Field of Dreams”-“If you build it, they will come.” Okay, they’ll come whether you build it, or not, which is why, I suppose, it must be built. But when it means that another part of Pikeville’s history will have to bite the dust, it does not tend to sit well, especially with those most affected by it. What irks as much as anything are the pronouncements by those responsible for the decision to begin with: It is a done deal. Nothing can be done now. Learn to live with it. If you objected, why didn’t you attend our meetings?
Well, far be it from me to stand in the way of progress. Progress it may very well be, but when progress involves the destruction of so much of the downtown’s history, the word progress doesn’t come to mind so much as another term-regress.